Why Ultima sucked (was Re: Tabula Rasa back from the dead)

[Venkman]

That was awesome though  :-D

[WindupAtheist]

I'm not siding with either of you. You're both freaking me out.

Even though it was addressed as such, my last post wasn't really for you.

Hoax, go play in traffic.  I couldn't give a fuck less about your shrill pissant opinions, or your horseshit wannabe-moderator routine.  Yeah, the Tabula Rasa thread is thoroughly derailed and nobody but you gives a fuck.  Eat shit.

[Trippy]

Um guys? Can't we all just get along?

[rk47]

  WUA

[Signe]

Everyone is fighting all over f13 lately.  At least two of my threads disolved into verbal fisticuffs yesterday.  Of course, none of the fights are even about the original subject so it's not my fault.  I'm innocent.  If we were all in the same room, we could settle our differences the old fashioned way.  Like children.

[Slayerik]

Everyone is fighting all over f13 lately.  At least two of my threads disolved into verbal fisticuffs yesterday.  Of course, none of the fights are even about the original subject so it's not my fault.  I'm innocent.  If we were all in the same room, we could settle our differences the old fashioned way.  Like children.

Signe, we all know you are far from innocent :)

[SnakeCharmer]

I'm not siding with either of you. You're both freaking me out.

Even though it was addressed as such, my last post wasn't really for you.

Hoax, go play in traffic.  I couldn't give a fuck less about your shrill pissant opinions, or your horseshit wannabe-moderator routine.  Yeah, the Tabula Rasa thread is thoroughly derailed and nobody but you gives a fuck.  Eat shit.

I care :(

Gimmeh TR news, damnit!

[Hoax]

or your horseshit wannabe-moderator routine.  Yeah, the Tabula Rasa thread is thoroughly derailed and nobody but you gives a fuck.  Eat shit.

Moderator routine?  I dont even know what that means, I believe I merely voiced my displeasure with finding your fucking halfwit posts in a thread that wasn't clearly designated as a retard habitat.  You know, the ones with StarWars or UO in the subject line?  Then I noticed the only reason I was experiencing said displeasue is because you were completely off-topic so you could argue with Schild about whether JRPG's or the old Ultimas are better rpgs.

No seriously, YOU eat shit and die stupidass.  I may be a ton of things, but I'm not the fucking numbnuts fighting about which game from 10+ years ago was cooler.  We know that the effeminate character designs of azn games freak you out because you aren't that comfortable with your manhood or whateverthefuck I dont need to read about it.  Again.  Ever.

[Venkman]

One of my all-time favorite movies for clever conjunctioning of profane words is the first Diehard. Ya can't go 30 seconds in that movie with Bruce Willis uttering some fanciful twist of phrasing. He wouldn't win any professorships for the Queen's English, but it's fun nonetheless.

[Sir Fodder]

Looking through the screenshots and some of the fiction on the TR website makes me wonder if the rather harsh looking environments might severely limit the potential longer sub term playerbase. It seems that in most MMOGs there are a lot of really beautiful, somehow familiar, and/or pleasant places to go; nice places to explore and congregate. I think this is certainly part of WoW's success. Maybe that stuff says something about the prevalence/success of fantasy vs SciFi MMOGs? Will they put some sort of Holodeck with pretty stuff into the amusement park theme?

[Falconeer]

Die Hard = Diablo.
Bruce Willis is my Blizzard.

[Trippy]

or your horseshit wannabe-moderator routine.  Yeah, the Tabula Rasa thread is thoroughly derailed and nobody but you gives a fuck.  Eat shit.

Moderator routine?  I dont even know what that means, I believe I merely voiced my displeasure with finding your fucking halfwit posts in a thread that wasn't clearly designated as a retard habitat.  You know, the ones with StarWars or UO in the subject line?  Then I noticed the only reason I was experiencing said displeasue is because you were completely off-topic so you could argue with Schild about whether JRPG's or the old Ultimas are better rpgs.

No seriously, YOU eat shit and die stupidass.  I may be a ton of things, but I'm not the fucking numbnuts fighting about which game from 10+ years ago was cooler.  We know that the effeminate character designs of azn games freak you out because you aren't that comfortable with your manhood or whateverthefuck I dont need to read about it.  Again.  Ever.

I'm going to start banning people if you guys don't calm down.

[Xerapis]

~insert chirping crickets here~

[SansWetware]

So... about those old games.  I find that if I am going back to an older game I am really going it because it is endearing, or funny, or so different that I can't find anything like it elsewhere.  I feel it's rarely about superior design.  Earthbound - I play it every couple of years I guess.  It reminds of of happy times.  Maniac Mansion - same.  I also love River City Ransom.  Something about those stubby legs and hamfists pummeling fat-headed baddies gives me a glee that no amount of particle-effect wizardry can emulate. 

I remember watching my mother play one of the Ultimas way back when.  She loved RPGs (last I heard she played through The Longest Journey).  All the choices bogged her down and seemed superfluous.  The idea was ahead of its time.  It had all of the fancy choices we expect and prided itself on that.  There was little pay-off for all of that decision-making though.  Why did it matter if she went sword over flail?  It played and looked basically the same.  If the choice is pointless I resent making it.

But I see a pattern forming.  With myself, anyway.  I just end up not caring.  Too much deciding shit and I just end up hating my choices and starting over again and again.  Then I quit.  The one MMO exception is CoX.   The choices are endless, the result is always pretty cool, and people get compliments just for being creative and unique with their backstories and costumes.  There's not much Serious Business about it and it reminds me of the old games I love.  "Go kill the bad guy for Great Justice!" and "Go smash the stupid do-gooder because he is in the big bosses' way!" is all I need.
 
 

[Falconeer]

"Why Ultima sucked"?? Flamebait title!

[WindupAtheist]

I dont need to read about it.  Again.  Ever.

Who gives a fuck what you need?  You can either learn to suck it up and scroll past posts you don't want to see, or you can continue to throw girlish hissyfits everytime you read one.  It makes no difference to me.

I'm going to start banning people if you guys don't calm down.

I'm always calm.

[Velorath]

Western RPGs have largely stagnated compared to Japan. Where the entire nation of gamers loves RPGs, America simply doesn't. We're still stuck with people bitching and moaning about changes in UO, a 10 year old game, here on f13. It's depressing. Meanwhile Asia is kicking our fucking ass all over the place. (And then there's WoW, but this isn't really about WoW).

A little late to the conversation, but I was pretty much avoiding the topic when I thought it was about Tabula Rasa.

RPG's aren't moving forward?  What do you expect?  The defining aspect of an RPG... the very thing that makes them what they are, is a reliance on archaic character building systems with stats and hitpoints and xp, still being reused from the P&P RPG's.  I'd say that Japan has stagnated in that they haven't realized yet that RPG's have just about outlived their usefulness for anything other than nostalgia.  Look at something like God of War.  It shows just how elegantly you can tell a story, and have character building (spending points on increasing weapon and magic strength), without all the tedium of random encounters, talking to dozens of NPCs, or grinding from level 62 to 63 to gain a few more hit points.  P&P RPG's were all about rule systems.  Shit you could use that was simple enough to follow on some pieces of paper, because we were the ones that had to keep track of everything.  Now the computers and consoles can keep track of all that stuff.  I don't need the rule systems to be readily apparent in my games now, it can be kept behind the scenes.

The best RPG stuff that's come out of Japan has been hybrid stuff like Odin Sphere, and it's their non-RPG aspects that make them notable.  Had Odin Sphere just been made as an action game, with most of the RPG elements trimed out, would it have been a worse game?  Shadow Hearts main innovation was the judgement ring.  In essence it was a band-aid the developers used to cover up the fact that combat in most console RPG's didn't actually require you to pay attention most of the time.  With the judgement ring, you couldn't just keep pressing the attack button, you actually had to pay attention.  But again, it begs the question, why make the game an RPG if developers realized that a lot of the trappings of the genre were just inherently unfun?

I don't know.  I used to love RPG's, but these days I just don't see what they have to offer that no other genre can do better.

[schild]

Of course the hybrid stuff is fantastic. They took the best of two worlds - one, a dead genre, and the other, the classic RPG - and merged them. They took the beat-em-up (2d and 3d) and made things like Valkyrie Profile, Radiata Stories, Rogue Galaxy and it even goes as far back as Zelda 2. But while the height of Beat 'em Ups was like Final Fight and Alien vs Predator, the hybrid genre that was birthed kept progressing. Really, that's the future. The hybridization. We're seeing it now with Trusty Bell/Eternal Sonata and Last Remnant. But make no mistake, even with all the beefcake Beat 'Em Up trappings, at their core they are still JRPGs. Meanwhile, KOTOR is like "Hey, I'm fun, look, we changed the angle on Baldur's Gate." Meh. The JRPG genre means more than heroes on one side, monsters on the other, and levels. So much more. Western RPGs? Not so much.

[Tebonas]

Which might be a problem for you but I could easily play a few more Baldurs Gates.

[tmp]

Meanwhile, KOTOR is like "Hey, I'm fun, look, we changed the angle on Baldur's Gate." Meh. The JRPG genre means more than heroes on one side, monsters on the other, and levels. So much more. Western RPGs? Not so much.

Given story line of both KotOR games and characters involved, the "heroes on one side" etc is extremely bad simplification, imo. The plots aren't really different from lot of jRPG's depth-wise and hey, you can even choose the flavour for your ending and overall story which on the eastern side seems to be reserved mostly for dating games.

edit: also, KotOR reminds me: how does Jade Empires compare to modern eastern RPG games? It sounded pretty interesting and quite evolved, but then I didn't play it so lacking first-hand experience.

[Zonk]

edit: also, KotOR reminds me: how does Jade Empires compare to modern eastern RPG games? It sounded pretty interesting and quite evolved, but then I didn't play it so lacking first-hand experience.

I enjoyed Jade Empire a lot, but I know a lot of folks who dug Bioware's other stuff didn't so much. The martial arts system feels very different than their other games, and the story twists and turns ... a good amount? But somehow less than KOTOR and others? Feels a bit more linear, I think is the best way to say it.

It's not much like modern Korean/Japanese RPGs, though, to answer your question. Has a definite American feel. Sort of has a Seven Samurai meets High Noon feel to it, if that makes sense.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Game play did trump graphics at least in the 80's and 90's in my opinion. But any game released now has to have great graphics to sell now. I mostly played and still do today wargames like:

Kampfgruppe (1985)
Gary Grigsby's Pacific War (1992)
Steel Panthers (1995)

And at least a few years ago played again some of the " SSI Gold Box" AD&D and Eye of the Beholder, good times. 

[Velorath]

Game play did trump graphics at least in the 80's and 90's in my opinion. But any game released now has to have great graphics to sell now. I mostly played and still do today wargames like:

Kampfgruppe (1985)
Gary Grigsby's Pacific War (1992)
Steel Panthers (1995)

And at least a few years ago played again some of the " SSI Gold Box" AD&D and Eye of the Beholder, good times. 

I replay all the Gold Box stuff every few years or so.  The combat in those games is some of the earliest Tactics-style gameplay I can think of.

[Morat20]

I miss the Monkey Island games. And Grim Fandango. And fuck, X-Wing and Tie-Fighter.

Wait, those are all LucasArts titles. Fucking George Lucas ruined the games industry, just like he ruined Star Wars. DAMMIT!

Seriously, I do get the Monkey Island joneses every now and then. And my wife called me at work yesterday to let me know she'd downloaded the original Leisure Suit Larry and was having a blast (and dieing a lot). I recommended Space Quest when she was done.

That's about all I have on old games, although I admit I am hoping Sid Meiers redoes Alpha Centauri. One reason I'm following Spore is that Wright has identified the critical problem in modern game design -- that graphics and art are eating up an ever increasing percentage of the game budget and time -- and has tried to make a game that gets around that problem, to an extent.

I don't see any real solutions at the moment, except "better tools" or "longer development times" or "bigger budgets"....not really great ideas, I admit.

[schild]

It's not much like modern Korean/Japanese RPGs, though, to answer your question. Has a definite American feel. Sort of has a Seven Samurai meets High Noon feel to it, if that makes sense.

Actually, I think Jade Empire felt western because the Asians had notably Asian faces and the combat sucked.

I replay all the Gold Box stuff every few years or so.  The combat in those games is some of the earliest Tactics-style gameplay I can think of.

You'd be correct. The earliest straight tactics title I can think of for consoles is Fire Emblem for the NES, which was never brought over to America. I think it came out in 1989 or 1990.

[Jayce]

So, all you people who play older games once in a while, what's the best way to slow them down these days?  I used to use Mo'slo or whatever when it was free, but I'd think you could fire up dos 7.0 in a vpc these days or something.

I have an old copy of x-com that is burning a hole in my um... desire to play it.

[schild]

Keep an old PC.

[Slayerik]

Could try DOS Box

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

" DOSBox is a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms. DOSBox has already been ported to many different platforms, such as Windows, BeOS, Linux, MacOS X...

DOSBox also emulates CPU:286/386 realmode/protected mode, Directory FileSystem/XMS/EMS, Tandy/Hercules/CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA graphics, a SoundBlaster/Gravis Ultra Sound card for excellent sound compatibility with older games...

You can "re-live" the good old days with the help of DOSBox, it can run plenty of the old classics that don't run on your new computer!

DOSBox is totally free of charge and OpenSource."

But Schild is right, certain things you cant beat having a real DOS box.

[rk47]

Yeah like running Daggerfall with full sound and music on old machine. I really loved the twisting dungeons in that game. Tried it with XP, sure it runs but movement really sucks :(

[Tebonas]

Yep, I use Dosbox. Works like a charm.

[Xuri]

One reason I'm following Spore is that Wright has identified the critical problem in modern game design -- that graphics and art are eating up an ever increasing percentage of the game budget and time -- and has tried to make a game that gets around that problem, to an extent.

Yeah, that really worked out well for him, seeing as development started seven years ago and the projected release isn't until early -> mid 2008. :P

[WindupAtheist]

One reason I'm following Spore is that Wright has identified the critical problem in modern game design -- that graphics and art are eating up an ever increasing percentage of the game budget and time -- and has tried to make a game that gets around that problem, to an extent.

Yeah, that really worked out well for him, seeing as development started seven years ago and the projected release isn't until early -> mid 2008. :P

If he can get the game delayed until the year 2807, technically everything up to this point will have been only 1% of their total development time.   :-D

[Venkman]

They replaced the time and resource requirements of generating assets with time and different resources for generating mathematic probability formulae :)

[schild]

Yea, instead of bogging down my computer with shitty textures (par for the course with previous Will Wright titles), we're gonna bog down our computers doing math. Meh. Critical problem my ass.

[Reg]

Will Wright should cancel Spore and concentrate on making a game with lots of effeminate big eyed characters in it. 'Cause there's just never enough of those.

edit: spelling